Born out of the "Zoom Boom" of the Coronavirus pandemic, the Cogtweeto Philosophy Workshop Series is free, public, all-online workshop series developed to create a new and radically more accessible space for philosophical conversation. I founded the series, along with fellow PhD student Cassie Finley (University of Iowa), in December 2020. 

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Our initial goal for Cogtweeto ("I tweet therefore I am") was to encourage those on "Philosophy Twitter" – whose interactions are typically (merely) social in nature – to engage more deeply with each others’ "actual" philosophical work. As the initiative has grown, our focus has shifted to improving access to philosophical conferencing and workshopping spaces by lowering physical, institutional, and financial barriers to entry.

 

Our primary goals are now threefold. First, to provide a decentralized, more accessible, more just forum for philosophical conferencing which welcomes and prioritizes those with little to no institutional access to traditional conference spaces. This includes advanced undergraduates, graduate students with little institutional backing, early career researchers, adjunct lecturers and otherwise contingent faculty, and independent scholars. Second, to provide "low stakes" practice opportunities for developing presentation and audience participation experience across a range of academic presentation formats. And third, to promote free, public access to contemporary philosophical research.

 

You can read more about the initiative on our website and in our feature at Daily Nous.